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Two-term systems are of especial relevance to the diachrony of case systems: very often such systems represent either the last or the first stage of the existence of case in the language, and their study is important for understanding how case systems emerge and dissolve. To avoid confusion and aprioristic labels, the members of a bicasual system will be called Dir(ect) and Obl(ique). The label Dir is assigned to the case which coincides with the citation form of the noun. This article deals only with those systems where both cases are able to encode semantico-syntactic functions of verbal...

Two-term systems are of especial relevance to the diachrony of case systems: very often such systems represent either the last or the first stage of the existence of case in the language, and their study is important for understanding how case systems emerge and dissolve. To avoid confusion and aprioristic labels, the members of a bicasual system will be called Dir(ect) and Obl(ique). The label Dir is assigned to the case which coincides with the citation form of the noun. This article deals only with those systems where both cases are able to encode semantico-syntactic functions of verbal dependents (that is, relational cases). The article also discusses the areal and genetic distribution of two-term case systems, cross-linguistic trends in the functional organisation of two-term case systems, and their morphology and diachrony.